


all I wanna do is grow old with you

by mollivanders



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-25
Updated: 2010-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never gets married.</p><p>Robin watches while every year Ted gets a little older, becomes the professor more and more. Life gets in the way – there are classes to teach, papers to grade, trade journals to keep up on – and as Lily and Marshall focus more on their lives, so does Ted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all I wanna do is grow old with you

**Author's Note:**

> **Title: all I wanna do is grow old with you**  
>  Fandom: HIMYM  
> Rating: PG  
> Characters: Ted/Robin, Lily/Marshall, Barney, Ted's not-former-student girlfriend  
> Summary: AU, set sometime in the HIMYM future. Same basic storyline, just with Ted/Robin. Word Count - 920  
> Disclaimer: CBS owns _How I Met Your Mother_. I own...not even this laptop. Adam Sandler probably owns 'Grow Old With You,' from which the title comes.

He never gets married.

Robin watches while every year Ted gets a little older, becomes the professor more and more. Life gets in the way – there are classes to teach, papers to grade, trade journals to keep up on – and as Lily and Marshall focus more on their lives, so does Ted.

(Barney still comes around at least twice a week to rail ‘Suit up!’ at Ted and drag him out, but if Ted was unapproachable before he met Barney, he’s now in another universe of tweed jackets and at one point, horn-rimmed glasses.)

Robin, somehow, is still around. She’s still the roommate, still reminds Ted to pick up milk on his way home from work and he asks her to balance their checkbook because he never knows what they spend money on. 

(It becomes ‘they’ without them noticing, especially not Robin.)

At one point he dates one of his former students ( _not_ student, he reminds Robin, a girl in a different classroom) and Robin doesn’t like her. She sits too close to Ted and she’s doing graduate work in Native American myths and talks about rain dances like they’re a thing of the past. Rebelling against this new girl, Robin brings a guy home one night when she knows Ted is there with his girlfriend and pulls her date to the bedroom.

She’s unnerved by the sound of Ted’s voice outside her door though, droning on about architecture in ancient Native American civilizations, and decides she’s not giving up that easy. Robin’s not even sure what she’s fighting for but she knows she’s not giving up.

(Robin still remembers giving up once, choosing the moment over the life, and she doesn’t regret it – but she wonders who that girl was and what confused her so terribly.)

It gets pretty serious with the not-his-former-student girlfriend and Robin worries, actually starts looking for new apartments in the classified ads. Lily comes over one night, half-pregnant, and plies Robin with glass after glass of wine until Robin caves and curls up against Lily’s shoulder, mumbles _I don’t want to leave again_.

A week later, Ted’s not-former-student girlfriend stops showing up (Robin tries not to wonder what Lily did this time). Then other things start happening.

Ted starts buying milk without being reminded and he brings flowers home, _to brighten the apartment_ he says, yellow lilies and bright pink roses. The horn-rimmed glasses disappear, replaced by his familiar contacts, and the tweed suits end up in the donation box Robin keeps by the door. She tries not to wonder (does anyway).

Six months go by before Ted says anything, tells her by accident while they’re watching _Star Wars_ and eating burnt lasagna for dinner. The words falls out of his mouth, thoughtless and heartfelt, and Robin feels him freeze next to her, clearly frightened she’ll run out the door the way she made him do all those years ago on their first date.

( _I don’t want you to leave,_ he tells her.)

Impulsive is the word of the night – Robin leans forward, her palm anchored on his thigh, and presses her mouth to his. It’s sudden (not surprising) when he kisses her back, buried emotions tumbling past the surface as he pulls her closer. She half-gasps when he flips her over, feels her weight sinking into the old red couch as Ted doesn’t let up and she digs her nails against his shirt (remembers).

 _I don’t want to leave either_ , she gets out and the scratch of his five o’clock shadow sends a shiver down her spine (she guides his hands, helps him discard their clothes as they pick up an old, familiar rhythm, battles in space a fitting soundtrack.

They don’t announce it to anyone this time, just keep living their lives. When Barney orders Ted to ‘Suit up!,’ Ted complies but casts a long-suffering glance at Robin as she waves him out the door, a smile playing on her lips. She’s grateful for the nights by herself and the nights she spends with Lily because she doesn’t have to miss him like this. Robin knows he’s coming back.

And when he does come back, from an outing with Barney, a night architecture class, a consulting trip she pushed him to take, she pulls him back to that old drawing board he’s hung on to all these years. Robin helps him knock the ungraded papers aside, lets him seal her between the old desk’s polished wood and the rough slide of his skin and doesn’t ask herself why they let so many years go by.

Eventually, Lily and Marshall and Barney stop asking questions, just assume this is the way things are meant to go, would always go, and Ted tells stories to Lily and Marshall’s kids about how they all met. He doesn’t seem to miss the life he once wanted, or he misses it less than the life Robin would if they changed the ways things were. She cautiously asks him one night if he still wants children, unsure what answer she’s looking for. He looks up from where they’re trying to cook (drinking more than cooking) and quirks a smile at her.

 _I’ve got you,_ he affirms. _That’s what matters._ With a flourish of the ladle, he adds, _and this place. Can you imagine cleaning children's scrawls off the walls?_

(Between the years, until her hair shifts to gray and he starts using a cane, his (their) answer never changes.)

But Ted never gets married.

_Finis_


End file.
